I honestly think this genre is horrible and counterproductive, even though the writer's intentions are good. It gives no examples, no explanations, no guidelines for proper implementations - just a list of condescending gotchas, showing off the superior intellect and perception of the author.

I agree, I think this format works when the subject matter is trivial enough that it's easy to construct counter examples yourself once the contradiction is pointed out.

The "Name" version is a good example of that, I can easily see how most of the examples on this list can be falsehoods.

On the other hand in TFA some of the affirmations leave me more perplexed. For instance, regarding color conversion: "converting from A to B is just the inverse of converting from B to A". I wonder what's meant here. Is it just a matter of rounding or is there more to it than that?

The catch 22 here is that if you understand this list then chances are you already knew about most of these gotchas.

So yeah, a pretty bad format. Now we just have to write "`Falsehood programmers believe about X` considered harmful".

So what if it was? The reply still doesn't address the point raised by kazagistar. I looked at kdeldycke's list and some examples in fact do address it, but there's nothing in his comment to indicate it. It's not an unreasonable question to make.

1. Everything said in every "Falsehoods Programmers Believe..." list is true.

The Falsehoods sound like ultimate truths only because of the literary genre. They sound like they were written by an expert who not only knows what's true, but also knows what we think we know, which kind of automatically takes him/her to the next level of expertise.

It's true that examples and explanations would be nice and make for a more helpful guide, but those can usually be found with a bit of legwork, whereas the gotchas themselves are often only discovered by trial and error. In essence, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

A better approach would be to pick the list up and turn them into a collaborative work. Wiki, maybe?